Forums » Suggestions
Okay, I know a lot of people are going to whine about this, but it's something that I feel needs to be addressed. Recently a lot of Valkyrie pilots have been boosting up to their enemies, unloading triple sunflares into their enemy, and boosting away after they've died. All within a matter of seconds. For anyone who doesn't have a special ship, this is an instant and easy kill for any Valkyrie pilot. The secret recipe is triple sunflares and an ounce of skill required to boost into your enemy. And it's not hard, given the incredible acceleration and turn rate of the Valkyrie.
It's a similar suicidal tactic used by the former Prometheus and avalon torpedoes combo. But now Valkyries and sunflares are the culprit. Granted it may be avoidable by simply boosting away from the enemy with this configuration, but it makes engaging them almost impossible for anyone without a special ship. And no player should be forced to copy the ship type and loadout just to take these guys down or avoid 'em, because well... it discourages variety and it makes the game no fun.
However, I would like to emphasis that the problem is NOT with the Valkyrie ship itself. The problem lies within the sunflare rockets themselves. My proposals for the solution are as follows:
1. Increase speed, increase reload time.
It's my belief that the reason why people do this is because of the sluggish speed of the sunflares. It's slow. So the only way to increase your chances of hitting someone is by getting closer. And if you can afford to take a lot of splash damage, like in the case with the Valkyrie configuration, then you might as well just boost up to your enemy and pull a kamikaze on him. By increasing speed, people would be more willing to back off and fight from a reasonable distance.
Because of the insane amount of damage a triple sunflare configuration creates, it might be wise to increase the reload time, so people can't continuously spam triple sunflares at you, giving little to no time to dodge from each wave of rockets.
2. Increase speed, decrease damage.
(see above for reasons for speed increase)
Maybe the quickest solution would be to decrease the damage altogether. Because they'd be going faster, they'd be harder to dodge. So the logical thing to do would be to make them slightly weaker.
3. Increase speed, Modify triple rocket configuration.
(see above for reasons for speed increase)
Pilots with one sunflare launcher would be fine. Heck, the damage decrease wouldn't be necessary, because you'd only be firing one at a time. But when three of 'em are coming at you, you're toast. So maybe there could be some way of limiting them if they're used in multiple S ports. I don't exactly know how, maybe others can offer suggestions. Maybe only require one launcher? I don't know. But it's clear to me that having three of these suckers come at you head on, with high damage values for each and the combined proximity detonators, makes it one hell of a weapon that's hard to avoid at close ranges.
Personally, I miss the old fashioned duels of 3.1.x, where you'd fire with only one rocket port. The combo energy weapons seem to work fine, because they can be balanced by an increase in energy consumption. But it seems like there's no disadvantage to firing triple rockets, aside from the limited ammo. But now that there's 16 rockets, ammo really isn't that much of an issue. Perhaps the reload time would gradually increase as you group them together. So having triple rockets would have a high reload time, much like waiting for your battery to recharge by firing triple energy weapons. Or maybe a medium port can be added that would carry rocket launchers only.
Any other thoughts or ideas?
It's a similar suicidal tactic used by the former Prometheus and avalon torpedoes combo. But now Valkyries and sunflares are the culprit. Granted it may be avoidable by simply boosting away from the enemy with this configuration, but it makes engaging them almost impossible for anyone without a special ship. And no player should be forced to copy the ship type and loadout just to take these guys down or avoid 'em, because well... it discourages variety and it makes the game no fun.
However, I would like to emphasis that the problem is NOT with the Valkyrie ship itself. The problem lies within the sunflare rockets themselves. My proposals for the solution are as follows:
1. Increase speed, increase reload time.
It's my belief that the reason why people do this is because of the sluggish speed of the sunflares. It's slow. So the only way to increase your chances of hitting someone is by getting closer. And if you can afford to take a lot of splash damage, like in the case with the Valkyrie configuration, then you might as well just boost up to your enemy and pull a kamikaze on him. By increasing speed, people would be more willing to back off and fight from a reasonable distance.
Because of the insane amount of damage a triple sunflare configuration creates, it might be wise to increase the reload time, so people can't continuously spam triple sunflares at you, giving little to no time to dodge from each wave of rockets.
2. Increase speed, decrease damage.
(see above for reasons for speed increase)
Maybe the quickest solution would be to decrease the damage altogether. Because they'd be going faster, they'd be harder to dodge. So the logical thing to do would be to make them slightly weaker.
3. Increase speed, Modify triple rocket configuration.
(see above for reasons for speed increase)
Pilots with one sunflare launcher would be fine. Heck, the damage decrease wouldn't be necessary, because you'd only be firing one at a time. But when three of 'em are coming at you, you're toast. So maybe there could be some way of limiting them if they're used in multiple S ports. I don't exactly know how, maybe others can offer suggestions. Maybe only require one launcher? I don't know. But it's clear to me that having three of these suckers come at you head on, with high damage values for each and the combined proximity detonators, makes it one hell of a weapon that's hard to avoid at close ranges.
Personally, I miss the old fashioned duels of 3.1.x, where you'd fire with only one rocket port. The combo energy weapons seem to work fine, because they can be balanced by an increase in energy consumption. But it seems like there's no disadvantage to firing triple rockets, aside from the limited ammo. But now that there's 16 rockets, ammo really isn't that much of an issue. Perhaps the reload time would gradually increase as you group them together. So having triple rockets would have a high reload time, much like waiting for your battery to recharge by firing triple energy weapons. Or maybe a medium port can be added that would carry rocket launchers only.
Any other thoughts or ideas?
Nooo!!! Please don't nerf the sunflare! It's my favorite weapon! I don't care if it gets nerfed for multiples or something, but leave it the way it is for a single one!
That's what I'm trying to get at here, Pyro. The triples are the problem, especially when grouped with the Valkyrie. I got nothin' against single sunflares.
I don't see this as in any way particularly different from the problem that we had with the rails, and again the problem isn't the weapon, its the game universe it exists in.
But I've said enough on that.
My prediction is that change them how you like, they will still be used in this way. No fix is available beyond literally nerfing them to the point that they do less game than a tachyon.
And, just as I predicted that nerfing the rail would lead to alot of all rockets configurations (remember just a week ago everyone whining that the sunflares were too week?), I predict if you do nerf the sunflares you'll just move the problem around to something else (maybe gemini's... the list of usable small weapons is getting really short).
But I've said enough on that.
My prediction is that change them how you like, they will still be used in this way. No fix is available beyond literally nerfing them to the point that they do less game than a tachyon.
And, just as I predicted that nerfing the rail would lead to alot of all rockets configurations (remember just a week ago everyone whining that the sunflares were too week?), I predict if you do nerf the sunflares you'll just move the problem around to something else (maybe gemini's... the list of usable small weapons is getting really short).
Arolte, how about we just lock everyone in a bus?
You need to realize that people are ALWAYS going to look for a massive upper hand and there will ALWAYS be one out there unless everyone is forced to fly the exact same damn ship configuration. It's impossible to prevent otherwise because there are too many variables to account for.
Someone will find a trick eventually no matter what you do, unless you lock everyone in the same ship and weapon setup.
As soon as they find it, others will naturally adopt it.
On an aside note, thanks for the idea...I'm going to load one of my Valks out this way and see how it works.
You need to realize that people are ALWAYS going to look for a massive upper hand and there will ALWAYS be one out there unless everyone is forced to fly the exact same damn ship configuration. It's impossible to prevent otherwise because there are too many variables to account for.
Someone will find a trick eventually no matter what you do, unless you lock everyone in the same ship and weapon setup.
As soon as they find it, others will naturally adopt it.
On an aside note, thanks for the idea...I'm going to load one of my Valks out this way and see how it works.
I do think that increasing the reload time for each additional grouping will help reduce its suicidal usage, and would help give the person a chance to escape (or kill him) before he'd have a chance to unleash another triple group of sunflares at you. At the same time it would allow single rockets to still be lethal and useful. So the damage and speed properties of the sunflares won't change, just the repeat rate of one rocket launcher versus three rocket launchers.
To get a better idea of how this works, think of the Unreal or Unreal Tournament rocket launcher. It takes longer to load all six chambers, rather than firing them individually. Of course in Vendetta you wouldn't have to hold down the fire key to load them, but the idea behind it remains the same. Each rocket would be transferred from one chamber and into another, until all of them are ready for firing. IMO this would be the most logical solution. That way both energy and projectile based weapons will have their disadvantages to groupings.
To get a better idea of how this works, think of the Unreal or Unreal Tournament rocket launcher. It takes longer to load all six chambers, rather than firing them individually. Of course in Vendetta you wouldn't have to hold down the fire key to load them, but the idea behind it remains the same. Each rocket would be transferred from one chamber and into another, until all of them are ready for firing. IMO this would be the most logical solution. That way both energy and projectile based weapons will have their disadvantages to groupings.
From a coding perspective, I think that this idea is too complex to be worth it unless something is done to affect triple-linked warheads in general.
Avalons take battery, so why shouldn't every warhead? You could pair up warhead and laser configurations to take the same energy and do roughly the same damage (so that players could have a choice of either depending on the situation).
Example: You could have triple-linked sunflares do the same as triple-linked gravitons (roughly the same damage, anyway) and they'd take the same battery charge per shot.
Draining the battery would certainly create those long duels you so desperately want, because people would twist and turn while they recharge.....
Avalons take battery, so why shouldn't every warhead? You could pair up warhead and laser configurations to take the same energy and do roughly the same damage (so that players could have a choice of either depending on the situation).
Example: You could have triple-linked sunflares do the same as triple-linked gravitons (roughly the same damage, anyway) and they'd take the same battery charge per shot.
Draining the battery would certainly create those long duels you so desperately want, because people would twist and turn while they recharge.....
khral, lets look at this rationaly without nurfing anything.. IT's annoying, i'll admit. But at point blank range, those sunflares will bliterate a valk to. Unlike the prom + nuke, if a valk pilot does it wrong, he's dead. and besides, if you have an ounce of skill, you can dodge a little 35m prox range...
Arolte: Basically, you are saying its unfair that a 1000c ship flown by a n00b gets destroyed by a 60,000c Valk flown by a skilfull pilot? If they aren't skilled they either blow themselves up, or totally miss and have just wasted 3 rockets in one go (miss some more and you are totally out of ammo)... I'm sorry but i think if you can't dodge these rockets you plain suck... its not hard as they move so slowly... Also the Valk only has 12000 hull, and since the rockets tend to do more damage to yourself if you launch them point-blank, you will die against anything but a Centurion (which is fast enough to dodge these anyway)...
Plus your reloading idea is a little unrealistic because in UT the gun loads the rockets from the same source, where as in Vendetta the individual weapons are self-contained, so why wouldn't they reload in parallel?!?! Duh!!!! .
Plus your reloading idea is a little unrealistic because in UT the gun loads the rockets from the same source, where as in Vendetta the individual weapons are self-contained, so why wouldn't they reload in parallel?!?! Duh!!!! .
My solution right now is simple: Mines.
When I trade with pirates on, I trade in a promie with prox mines and whatever small, forward shooting weaps I want (dual sunflares right now, but I can take out valks with dual Gausses). I trade the extra cargo my cutter holds for 10k more hull points and the ability to hold a large port weapon. Why not use swarms, you ask? Because a smart pirate wouldn't bother to dodge, and just fly right past them (like any targeting missile, it's can't fly fast enough), whereas even if they brake, they're likely to hit my mines anyway.
If a pirate tries to fly up my tail and pop me with rockets, I drop a couple mines and BOOM... BOOM... BOOM... you get the idea. Sometimes I don't even bother to try to avoid the rockets (turbo-strafe-turbo) - that promie takes a LOT of damage. In fact, if I haven't hit top speed on turbo yet I'll sometimes toss out some rockets as well. As I gain speed the rockets fall back behind me, acting as additional mines. I actually use a medium or efficient engine just to make it easy for pirates to get in behind me - if they're foolish enough to attack, they get what they deserve. Once they learn my trick they still can't defeat me - if they have to strafe to dodge the mines, they have to drop their turbo, strafe and re-aim, while all the while I'm turboing away happily. They can't really try to come at me from an angle, either, since I'm going 180m/sec. In fact, this tactic makes shooting at me with energy weapons hopeless - the attacker drains his battery both to shoot and to turbo. Yes, I take damage, but they haven't killed me once since I started using this tactic. Lowest I ever got was 50% or so, and that was because I forgot to repair after I docked, and icarus went after me twice in succession.
Nihm and Icarus have both broken off attacks on me after using this tactic. They haven't learned their lesson and keep trying, though. Every time they attack my promie they lose money though, so I'm all for it.
The solution isn't nerfing the weaps. That's the last resort - we've seen what happened to the avalon and particularly the rails (now the second most useless weapon, behind the free lasers).
You could make minor alterations to certain ships. The valk should only have 2 cargo ports, and I'll keep saying it as long as it has more than that. That will destroy the valk as a pirate ship, but won't nerf it in any way. It's NOT a cargo ship, so why does it have that much cargo? I also still think the marauder needs more cargo space, and maybe a large port instead of the third (or even second and third) small. This way a marauder could use the mine tactic. None of this negates the power of a tri-flare, but if you're in a fighter and not trading, in a ship with decent manuverability, just use the tri-flares yourself. If you make the pirates impotent (in game, I mean, I'm sure most of them already are, IRL), I think you'll start seeing a lot more -fair- fights on vendetta. I would like to see a trader with high manuverability, even if it only has like one weapon slot. The Centurion doesn't seem very useful to me in it's current incarnation - give it 6 or 8 cargo and see what happens.
I'd also like to see mini mines, and they'd solve my problem with the marauder's weapons. These would go in a small port slot, and could work in two ways. 1) like the prox mines and you get 15 or 20 of them. 2) as an energy weapon, so you get an infinite number of them, working either like prox or lightning mines. These would only have a two or three minute life, and do a third less damage. I'm partial to the first option, oddly enough - it allows traders to keep moving in turbo without expending all their energy in defense. Actually, I'd like to see both of these as in-game options.
Another possible solution has been provided by Icarus himself - have all your ammo load from one source. If you load triple sunflares, you only get 16 ammo TOTAL. Bring the rails back to their original strength and energy requirement, but only load 30 ammo TOTAL. A tri rail would only have 10 shots. A quad would only have seven and a half. This is balance because the ORIGINAL rails do about the same damage as sunflares. They'd be the ubersunflare - no prox detonation, very fast, sniper-like, limited ammo, slightly more damage than flares, an elite weapon but not one SO good as to be godlike. Give it a 2k range - sniper-iffic. Perhaps drop the max ammo to 20 to keep in sync with the sunflares, or raise the flares to 20 ammo. Perhaps up the seekers/homers to 40/20, respectively.
After all, all your energy weapons draw from the same source....
Let's not forget that rockets and rails are skill weapons - they do the damage they do because it's hard to hit with them, unless you're really good or very lucky - the rails even more than rockets. So uber-players will have to choose between less ammo and more damage, or less dual/triple combos. This means that dual/triple/quad links wouldn't be so encouraged, and we'd see more different weapon configs. 18 seekers and 16 flares and maybe an energy weapon. Or perhaps 8 homers and dual sunflares with 8 shots each (16 total).
I think it could work.
(waits for celebrim to tell him he's wrong and why)
When I trade with pirates on, I trade in a promie with prox mines and whatever small, forward shooting weaps I want (dual sunflares right now, but I can take out valks with dual Gausses). I trade the extra cargo my cutter holds for 10k more hull points and the ability to hold a large port weapon. Why not use swarms, you ask? Because a smart pirate wouldn't bother to dodge, and just fly right past them (like any targeting missile, it's can't fly fast enough), whereas even if they brake, they're likely to hit my mines anyway.
If a pirate tries to fly up my tail and pop me with rockets, I drop a couple mines and BOOM... BOOM... BOOM... you get the idea. Sometimes I don't even bother to try to avoid the rockets (turbo-strafe-turbo) - that promie takes a LOT of damage. In fact, if I haven't hit top speed on turbo yet I'll sometimes toss out some rockets as well. As I gain speed the rockets fall back behind me, acting as additional mines. I actually use a medium or efficient engine just to make it easy for pirates to get in behind me - if they're foolish enough to attack, they get what they deserve. Once they learn my trick they still can't defeat me - if they have to strafe to dodge the mines, they have to drop their turbo, strafe and re-aim, while all the while I'm turboing away happily. They can't really try to come at me from an angle, either, since I'm going 180m/sec. In fact, this tactic makes shooting at me with energy weapons hopeless - the attacker drains his battery both to shoot and to turbo. Yes, I take damage, but they haven't killed me once since I started using this tactic. Lowest I ever got was 50% or so, and that was because I forgot to repair after I docked, and icarus went after me twice in succession.
Nihm and Icarus have both broken off attacks on me after using this tactic. They haven't learned their lesson and keep trying, though. Every time they attack my promie they lose money though, so I'm all for it.
The solution isn't nerfing the weaps. That's the last resort - we've seen what happened to the avalon and particularly the rails (now the second most useless weapon, behind the free lasers).
You could make minor alterations to certain ships. The valk should only have 2 cargo ports, and I'll keep saying it as long as it has more than that. That will destroy the valk as a pirate ship, but won't nerf it in any way. It's NOT a cargo ship, so why does it have that much cargo? I also still think the marauder needs more cargo space, and maybe a large port instead of the third (or even second and third) small. This way a marauder could use the mine tactic. None of this negates the power of a tri-flare, but if you're in a fighter and not trading, in a ship with decent manuverability, just use the tri-flares yourself. If you make the pirates impotent (in game, I mean, I'm sure most of them already are, IRL), I think you'll start seeing a lot more -fair- fights on vendetta. I would like to see a trader with high manuverability, even if it only has like one weapon slot. The Centurion doesn't seem very useful to me in it's current incarnation - give it 6 or 8 cargo and see what happens.
I'd also like to see mini mines, and they'd solve my problem with the marauder's weapons. These would go in a small port slot, and could work in two ways. 1) like the prox mines and you get 15 or 20 of them. 2) as an energy weapon, so you get an infinite number of them, working either like prox or lightning mines. These would only have a two or three minute life, and do a third less damage. I'm partial to the first option, oddly enough - it allows traders to keep moving in turbo without expending all their energy in defense. Actually, I'd like to see both of these as in-game options.
Another possible solution has been provided by Icarus himself - have all your ammo load from one source. If you load triple sunflares, you only get 16 ammo TOTAL. Bring the rails back to their original strength and energy requirement, but only load 30 ammo TOTAL. A tri rail would only have 10 shots. A quad would only have seven and a half. This is balance because the ORIGINAL rails do about the same damage as sunflares. They'd be the ubersunflare - no prox detonation, very fast, sniper-like, limited ammo, slightly more damage than flares, an elite weapon but not one SO good as to be godlike. Give it a 2k range - sniper-iffic. Perhaps drop the max ammo to 20 to keep in sync with the sunflares, or raise the flares to 20 ammo. Perhaps up the seekers/homers to 40/20, respectively.
After all, all your energy weapons draw from the same source....
Let's not forget that rockets and rails are skill weapons - they do the damage they do because it's hard to hit with them, unless you're really good or very lucky - the rails even more than rockets. So uber-players will have to choose between less ammo and more damage, or less dual/triple combos. This means that dual/triple/quad links wouldn't be so encouraged, and we'd see more different weapon configs. 18 seekers and 16 flares and maybe an energy weapon. Or perhaps 8 homers and dual sunflares with 8 shots each (16 total).
I think it could work.
(waits for celebrim to tell him he's wrong and why)
I don't get why you would involve the battery in it.
If you do you are just going to nerve the rockets, who would even chose the rockets if the energy weapons do the same damage use as much as energy as a rocket but are infinite "I mean just wait untill your battery is back up and you can shoot again" while a rocket has only got a certain amount, if you shoot them you are out of rockets and out of battery so no running and no ability to wait and be able to shoot again.
So in fact you are making the rockettype weapons inferior to the energy type weapons, and are nerving them once again. I do agree that they shouldn't be used as a spamming weapon or something like that, but don't nerve rockets, htey are already so easy to dodge "euhm make it realtively" and not even bothersome when hit by a couple.
cheers
If you do you are just going to nerve the rockets, who would even chose the rockets if the energy weapons do the same damage use as much as energy as a rocket but are infinite "I mean just wait untill your battery is back up and you can shoot again" while a rocket has only got a certain amount, if you shoot them you are out of rockets and out of battery so no running and no ability to wait and be able to shoot again.
So in fact you are making the rockettype weapons inferior to the energy type weapons, and are nerving them once again. I do agree that they shouldn't be used as a spamming weapon or something like that, but don't nerve rockets, htey are already so easy to dodge "euhm make it realtively" and not even bothersome when hit by a couple.
cheers
I hadn't really thought too much about mines, I never really used them before.
/me runs off to configure my ship with mines...
/me runs off to configure my ship with mines...
yeah, it seems only recently people are rediscovering the advantages of using mines.... If i were ever to trade i'd carry l.mines... not that its going to happen though ;)
Xochiluvr, the avalons have not been nerfed. The only thing that has changed is the proximity detonator. It does the same damage and it has the same splash radius. It was meant to be used against capital ships. Not fighters. In other words it was fixed. I do however agree that the railguns need a little more tweaking.
Icarus, all of this has nothing to do with skill. Any experienced Valk pilot can boost up to any non-special ship and shoot off rockets at point blank. The combined proximity detonators at point blank range makes it easy for the Valk pilot to hit their target. It's not hard! The ship has an advantage over acceleration and agility, which is the sole reason why they CAN get that close to you regardless of skill. Yes, it's true that you can boost away and never ever get close to a Valkyrie again. But considering that they're both the same ship class, it would make the game unbalanced and not fun. The issue here is that you'll never be able to engage a Valk alive in a non-special ship. They'll just suicide triple sunflares on you and they'll be the only one to live because of the hull advantage.
Again, let me remind you that I'm not arguing about any of the ships. The ships themselves are fine. It's just the fact that owning triple sunflares has no disadvantages whatsoever, and with the right ship it can be used in a similar fashion to the whole Prometheus + avalon combo, albeit not as deadly. Ideally, suicide tactics should be avoided altogether. IMO, the only pilots that don't have the skill in this particular situation are the ones that ram themselves against another ship and does this to avoid dogfights altogether.
And guys, before you argue further I'd like to ask that some of you actually try it out. Fly around in a non-special ship and try to take down a Valkyrie with triple sunflares. This is what we're supposed to be doing as beta testers. We're supposed to be testing all these configurations to get each balance issue ironed out by looking from different perspectives. Of course if you're that person that flies in a Valkyrie with triple sunflares ALL THE TIME, you won't see a problem. In fact you'll naturally argue against this report because you won't have the advantage anymore if this balance issue does in fact get fixed. But guess what, if that's your mindset on this whole test game, then you're NOT doing your job as a beta tester. You're only playing the game and you're not helping Guild Software out one bit.
If you haven't noticed by now, I've been flying in non-special ships for the majority of my time in Vendetta. I could fly a special ship all the time like everyone else, but then I wouldn't be able to report any balance issues that way. As much as it may anger you to "tweak" your favorite unbalanced config out, you need to remember that you still have a job to do as a beta tester. And it's sad to see that not a lot of you are not willing to look at this from a different perspective. If you're not willing to try out everything, you've downright failed in one of the major duties involved in being a beta tester.
Icarus, all of this has nothing to do with skill. Any experienced Valk pilot can boost up to any non-special ship and shoot off rockets at point blank. The combined proximity detonators at point blank range makes it easy for the Valk pilot to hit their target. It's not hard! The ship has an advantage over acceleration and agility, which is the sole reason why they CAN get that close to you regardless of skill. Yes, it's true that you can boost away and never ever get close to a Valkyrie again. But considering that they're both the same ship class, it would make the game unbalanced and not fun. The issue here is that you'll never be able to engage a Valk alive in a non-special ship. They'll just suicide triple sunflares on you and they'll be the only one to live because of the hull advantage.
Again, let me remind you that I'm not arguing about any of the ships. The ships themselves are fine. It's just the fact that owning triple sunflares has no disadvantages whatsoever, and with the right ship it can be used in a similar fashion to the whole Prometheus + avalon combo, albeit not as deadly. Ideally, suicide tactics should be avoided altogether. IMO, the only pilots that don't have the skill in this particular situation are the ones that ram themselves against another ship and does this to avoid dogfights altogether.
And guys, before you argue further I'd like to ask that some of you actually try it out. Fly around in a non-special ship and try to take down a Valkyrie with triple sunflares. This is what we're supposed to be doing as beta testers. We're supposed to be testing all these configurations to get each balance issue ironed out by looking from different perspectives. Of course if you're that person that flies in a Valkyrie with triple sunflares ALL THE TIME, you won't see a problem. In fact you'll naturally argue against this report because you won't have the advantage anymore if this balance issue does in fact get fixed. But guess what, if that's your mindset on this whole test game, then you're NOT doing your job as a beta tester. You're only playing the game and you're not helping Guild Software out one bit.
If you haven't noticed by now, I've been flying in non-special ships for the majority of my time in Vendetta. I could fly a special ship all the time like everyone else, but then I wouldn't be able to report any balance issues that way. As much as it may anger you to "tweak" your favorite unbalanced config out, you need to remember that you still have a job to do as a beta tester. And it's sad to see that not a lot of you are not willing to look at this from a different perspective. If you're not willing to try out everything, you've downright failed in one of the major duties involved in being a beta tester.
No disadvantages of using tri-sunflares?!?! It costs 40c per rocket to re-arm, its easy to dodge, so you just wasted 120c in one shot, and you can only fire 16 times, then you are anybodies!
I've been flying a double Sunflare Valk since before 3.2. I would lay claim to be the first player here that started using the rocket overrun on a Valk. I specifically started using it after getting 'schooled' against a Hog with an Advanced gatling on my double rail ship. The Hog wasn't a particular threat to me (I simply disengaged when I got to 20%), but the Hog had a particularly cheap set of tactics it was using to make any attempt I was making to get a bead on it with the rails rather painful. The Hog simply wasn't giving me any room to aim my rails by doing repeated gatling overruns that I didn't dare sit still for. I knew that the Hog wouldn't be able to do this and indeed would get flattened if I was dropping Sunfires out in his face as he charged me rather than the hard to aim (especially at close range) rails. So I went to rockets basically to counter a Hog + Gatling tactic, and its worked very well versus Hogs ever since. It doesn't work as well versus Vultures or Centurians, but it works better than anything else I know of.
Part of the reason I don't agree with you on this one, Arolte, is that I for one am not only using the rocket overrun. I'm mostly using it on hogs in which the pilot is dodgy enough that little else works. I find using standard strafe tactics with rockets works fine against other things, even Promy's. It's just the dodgier the target, the closer you have to be to get consistant hits, and that means risking some splash damage.
Yes, that does mean that basically any other light fighter doesn't have much a prayer head on vs. an at least competant Valk pilot regardless of the skill.
But that should have been obvious since the first day that the Valk was introduced, so there is no point about complaining about this one particular set up. The problem isn't with the rockets, its with the idea of 'special' ships to begin with. If the Valk had have been taken down to 8000 hull points as I suggested, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Yes, that does mean that the Maud would need to go down to 11,000 hull or so, and the Prom down to 16,000 hull or so, but you can't possibly expect to balance a game when the ships aren't balanced in the first place. And even if we did balance the specials, we'd still need to bump up the abilities of the lighter non-specials a little just to achieve any sort of parity.
My method:
Centurian: Give second small weapon slot
WartHog: Replace small weapon slot with large weapon slot; give high manueverability.
Wraith: Give medium manueverability. It is now a competitor of the Hornet, a ship it remsembles much more closesly than a Ragnarok. It can't specialize as well as the Hornet (at least once rails come back), but it has other advantages.
Vulture: Give third small weapon slot.
Valk: Reduce to 8,000 hull. It now still has better manueverability than an improved Vulture, more hull points and weapons than an improved Centurian, and more cargo capacity than any light fighter. The Warthog is now probably its equal, albiet with a different area of specialization.
Marauder: Reduce to 11,000 hull. It now has better cargo capacity and much better manueverability than any transport, but lower firepower and hitpoints than most fighter/bombers.
Promy: Reduce to 16,000 hull. It now has more hull than any other bomber, at the cost of a slightly less diverse weapons package.
The real question we need to be asking is whether the devs want to balance the ships at all.
Part of the reason I don't agree with you on this one, Arolte, is that I for one am not only using the rocket overrun. I'm mostly using it on hogs in which the pilot is dodgy enough that little else works. I find using standard strafe tactics with rockets works fine against other things, even Promy's. It's just the dodgier the target, the closer you have to be to get consistant hits, and that means risking some splash damage.
Yes, that does mean that basically any other light fighter doesn't have much a prayer head on vs. an at least competant Valk pilot regardless of the skill.
But that should have been obvious since the first day that the Valk was introduced, so there is no point about complaining about this one particular set up. The problem isn't with the rockets, its with the idea of 'special' ships to begin with. If the Valk had have been taken down to 8000 hull points as I suggested, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Yes, that does mean that the Maud would need to go down to 11,000 hull or so, and the Prom down to 16,000 hull or so, but you can't possibly expect to balance a game when the ships aren't balanced in the first place. And even if we did balance the specials, we'd still need to bump up the abilities of the lighter non-specials a little just to achieve any sort of parity.
My method:
Centurian: Give second small weapon slot
WartHog: Replace small weapon slot with large weapon slot; give high manueverability.
Wraith: Give medium manueverability. It is now a competitor of the Hornet, a ship it remsembles much more closesly than a Ragnarok. It can't specialize as well as the Hornet (at least once rails come back), but it has other advantages.
Vulture: Give third small weapon slot.
Valk: Reduce to 8,000 hull. It now still has better manueverability than an improved Vulture, more hull points and weapons than an improved Centurian, and more cargo capacity than any light fighter. The Warthog is now probably its equal, albiet with a different area of specialization.
Marauder: Reduce to 11,000 hull. It now has better cargo capacity and much better manueverability than any transport, but lower firepower and hitpoints than most fighter/bombers.
Promy: Reduce to 16,000 hull. It now has more hull than any other bomber, at the cost of a slightly less diverse weapons package.
The real question we need to be asking is whether the devs want to balance the ships at all.
Uhhh... okay, change the small port on the Warthog to a large port and increase the maneuverability. No complaints there.
=b
/me snickers.
=b
/me snickers.
Arolte: I realize that the Hog modifications are the most contriversial part of the plan. I justify them as follows:
1) The Hog is a peice of crap right now. Only the best players in the game are any threat at all to my Valk in it, and I don't have that great of reflexes. Now that the Valk is available to everyone, I'm not sure why anyone would mess with the Hog and for the most part they aren't.
2) The Wraith is an even bigger steaming pile of dung. If you are going to fly a heavy low manueverability fighter/bomber, get in a Rag or a Promy and maximize the advantages of such a thing. The obvious thing to 'fix' the Wraith is give it medium manueverability. A medium manueverability wraith has 2S + 1L and to match the Hornet's 4S. They have similar hull points. That's fine, because as 3.1 showed, specialization has its advantages. But, if we fix the Wraith, the Hog's problems become even worse. It is giving up h.p. to the new more dodgy Wraith, and the Wraith has second small weapon slot.
3) To balance that, the new Hog has to either get a specialization advantage or dodgier or both. The good news is that we can try one and see if that fixes the problem, and if it doesn't try the other. For instance, we could start with a med. manueverability Hog with 2 heavy weapon slots. It's still giving alot up to the new Wraith, but maybe that would be made up by being the only craft other than a Rag carrying two heavy weapons. Or we could start by giving it High manueverability, making it more of a match versus the higher firepower Vulture. Either way, it goes along way to closing the currently huge gap between the ships and the special ships.
In the long run, if we don't close that gap, we might as well do away with all the non-special ships because no one is going to use them.
1) The Hog is a peice of crap right now. Only the best players in the game are any threat at all to my Valk in it, and I don't have that great of reflexes. Now that the Valk is available to everyone, I'm not sure why anyone would mess with the Hog and for the most part they aren't.
2) The Wraith is an even bigger steaming pile of dung. If you are going to fly a heavy low manueverability fighter/bomber, get in a Rag or a Promy and maximize the advantages of such a thing. The obvious thing to 'fix' the Wraith is give it medium manueverability. A medium manueverability wraith has 2S + 1L and to match the Hornet's 4S. They have similar hull points. That's fine, because as 3.1 showed, specialization has its advantages. But, if we fix the Wraith, the Hog's problems become even worse. It is giving up h.p. to the new more dodgy Wraith, and the Wraith has second small weapon slot.
3) To balance that, the new Hog has to either get a specialization advantage or dodgier or both. The good news is that we can try one and see if that fixes the problem, and if it doesn't try the other. For instance, we could start with a med. manueverability Hog with 2 heavy weapon slots. It's still giving alot up to the new Wraith, but maybe that would be made up by being the only craft other than a Rag carrying two heavy weapons. Or we could start by giving it High manueverability, making it more of a match versus the higher firepower Vulture. Either way, it goes along way to closing the currently huge gap between the ships and the special ships.
In the long run, if we don't close that gap, we might as well do away with all the non-special ships because no one is going to use them.
Dont touch the ships!!! they alll have their uses. i saw a centuarian take out a1's uber ship with out getting hit. and a1 had a 360° auto aim turret.
DONT TOUCH THE SHIPS. other than the prom, they're all balanced if you ask me. Any good pilot in any ship can take out anything but the prom.
DONT TOUCH THE SHIPS. other than the prom, they're all balanced if you ask me. Any good pilot in any ship can take out anything but the prom.
Celebrim, to me it seems like barely anyone uses the regular ships anyway even now.
Mabye the devs don't really want the ships as balanced as some people think or would like. There needs to be a reason to motivate people to sign up for a given nation. If all the ships are well-balanced, there isn't one anymore.
Mabye the devs don't really want the ships as balanced as some people think or would like. There needs to be a reason to motivate people to sign up for a given nation. If all the ships are well-balanced, there isn't one anymore.